Inside Out. A Mini Review

FOR THE THIRD time since I became a parent, I helped one of my boys say goodbye to his fifth year and welcome his sixth.

In other words there was a birthday.  In other words I shoved chocolate cake at him, bought him a pair of swimming goggles and promised him a trip to the cinema.

Inside Out, the latest offering from the Disney Pixar stable had just been released and my boys were chomping at the bit to go see it.

Thanks to the newly turned six year old’s aunties that became an immediate happening when they presented him with a cinema voucher for his birthday.

Inside Out is a rather clever vehicle for explaining core memories and emotions to kids, including an important message for parents towards the end.  As is the ability of only the best movies, there is something for everyone in this one.

Riley Anderson is the young girl whose head provides the headquarters for five emotions, joy, fear, anger, disgust and sadness.  These feeling guide her through a house move and a new school.

Joy is the dominant emotion; a bright yellow sprite bathed in an ethereal light.  Upbeat, eternally positive, always looking on the bright side of life to the point of exhaustion and quite frankly, she's hard work.  Was it just me or did anyone else want to punch Joy in the head at times?

Fear is painted purple and a feature I really liked about this character was he, (wonder why they gave emotions gender. And how did they decide which one should be male or female. Hmmmm) was never too much in the forefront.  He jumped in at certain junctions but never took over.  I liked that. 

Anger, as you can expect, is bright red with regular tendancies to blow his top.  (Another male)  Anger was responsible for taking the movie and Riley in another direction altogether when he decided to make her run away back home to Minnesota to create new core memories. 

Disgust (a lady) had bags of ‘tude and the colour green to match.  Think “eewwww” with a sneer, jutting hip and you’ve got the picture. 

We cannot forget sadness.  The most, I think anyway, important emotion in the movie.  For all her blueness she played a pivotal part in portraying the main message which is, it’s ok not to be ok.  Big, huge message.   

You cannot have Joy without Sadness

I tried not to bombard the boys with questions on the way home about what they thought of it.  I was kind of hoping they saw more than a movie and a bucket of popcorn.  Interestingly enough, none of them wanted to punch Joy like I did, (I phrased the question slightly differently) but they all liked sadness.  And that was enough for me.  They also strongly identified with Anger.  Something for me to think about maybe.

And all of them wanted a Bing Bong.  What’s a Bing Bong?  Well, you’ll just have to go along and find out, won’t you?

Maybe take a few tissues with you as well.  If Inside Out doesn’t pull on your heart strings, the short film about volcanoes before it will.